Undertow Page 5

  “You’re oversimplifying,” I interrupted. “That’s the whole point. We can’t make it simple. You’ve got to come out of this thing with the benefit of the doubt. That’s all we can ask for—the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Do you suppose I’ll get that from Karen?”

  “Privately, no. Publicly, undoubtedly.”

  “God, that will make me sick. Karen in the role of the gallant wife, long-suffering and noble. She’ll love playing that role.”

  “She’s always played it.”

  “And pretty well, at that.”

  “But, Don,” I said. “She could balk. She can really hurt. She can murder you with a word.”

  “She’s not going to be overjoyed when she gets this message.”

  “Would you be?”

  “Ecstatic.”

  “You see,” Don said, “the deeper we go, the murkier it gets. And, how do you think Barnstable will react? Hell, he’s given me twenty-five years. He’s primed our pumps. Raised millions. And, Max Schwartz, old Max—not to mention my mother, my kids. These people will be mortified.”

  Christine poured him another cup of coffee. He put his hand around the cup, ignoring the handle, perhaps greedy for as much warmth as he could get. He looked a pitiable figure. It annoyed me to think in those terms. He had never been an object of pity. That would be the last reaction people would have had. He gulped at the coffee and shook himself, like an old dog after a nap.

  “I think one option has very definitely emerged,” I said. “And that is dependent on two basic factors. Either the body is found or it isn’t. If it is found, we must prevent an autopsy. If we can do that, then you’ll have the benefit of the doubt in that at least you didn’t have sex with her, and that would eliminate the dope problem as well. People will say, Who is he kidding? But at least none would know for certain, and we could construct a plausible story that would eliminate any hard facts which could point conclusively to a—a scandal.”

  “If we take that route, then I’m forced to lie outright. I told you, Lou, I don’t think I can do it. It’s not like a simple, ordinary political lie. This is a blatant head-on fourteen-karat lie. It’s too vulnerable.”

  “That’s the gamble you may have to take.”

  “That’s an interesting observation.”

  “Maybe we should get you a great lawyer. There are many legal ways to insulate the public from the facts.”

  “I disagree.” He was absorbed in his own thoughts, fighting to find some concentration, working to survive.

  “About a lawyer—”

  “If we hire a good lawyer—perhaps Ed Williams—think of what we’ve planted in people’s minds.”

  “But everyone is entitled to good legal counsel.”

  “My problem is not a legal one. Hire a lawyer of that stature and there is an implication of—foul play. Murder. People will want to grasp at that straw first. People are conditioned to think in those terms. After all, haven’t we got all the ingredients of a murder mystery here, and isn’t murder a national passion? People will construct all sorts of scenarios. Like this one, for example: Marlena was his mistress; she would expose him unless she extracted something from him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like some radical goal, some trade-off on a political goal. Not money. If I refused, she would expose me to the world as a fraud. There. That’s a motive. I found a way to kill her.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating.”

  There was no question now that he was gathering his forces. It was good to see him coming back. A red flush had begun to creep around his cheekbones.

  “But it all hinges on the elimination of an autopsy,” I said. “Suppose an autopsy is insisted upon. Suppose Marlena’s family insists upon it. Suppose nothing we say can persuade her father not to proceed with an autopsy. We are, after all, whites; and you know how she felt about that. Worse yet, her father might use the occasion for a vendetta, a vendetta against the whole white community. After all, we can expect him to occupy center stage before the media if he so chooses.”

  “If he insists on taking that tack, we’ll be creating some new options.”

  “I have another wild thought,” I said. “But please, Don, don’t go into a tailspin.”

  He shook his head. He seemed so fragile, sitting there slumped like a wavering image on a trick mirror.

  “Suppose the body is washed ashore. Near here. Let’s assume that, simply for the sake of my impending suggestion. Suppose we got out within the next few hours and found her body along the beach.”

  He looked up at me, fires of anger in his eyes. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said, standing up. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear it. But we might as well throw it on the table. It has got to cross our minds sooner or later.”

  “As an option,” he said sarcastically.

  “As an option.”

  He doubled over, slammed a fist into his mouth and gagged. It was a dry heave. I held his head down over his knees until he signaled with his hand that he was all right. He straightened up and pushed me away.

  “I know there are limits, Don, but—”

  “I’m walking on the edge, Lou. Don’t make it any tougher.”

  “You know what I’m saying, though, don’t you, Don?”

  “Yes, I know what you’re saying.”

  “I’m lost,” Christine interjected. “Somewhere along the line, I’ve lost you.”

  “He wants to eliminate Marlena’s body.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “It’s an option,” I said stubbornly. “It’s only an option.”

  “It’s disgusting,” Christine said.

  “Is it?”

  It was too late to go back. It was impossible to retrieve the thought, return it to the inchoate darkness of the mind, frozen beyond inarticulation. Too late. We had crossed the Rubicon. Their thoughts had to be no less different than mine. It was, very decidedly, a clear-cut option.

  “Shall I continue?”

  Don grunted. It was a kind of a involuntary sob.

  “The whole story is in the body,” I said. “We could simply find a way to get rid of the body. We could bury it, for example. After all, what is it?”

  “I can’t believe that this is you talking, Lou,” Don said. “Do you really think I can live with such a monstrous thing?”

  “I don’t know, Don. But you must remember. We didn’t murder this girl. We are dealing with an accident on the one hand, and a career that plays for pretty high stakes on the other. I truly believe we can rationalize the act.”

  “I don’t think I have it in me.”

  “Well, it was an option. It had to be said.”

  “Fuck that option. I couldn’t live with it.”

  “All right, let’s forget it,” I said, but I knew we could not forget it, that it would come swirling back, like a candy wrapper caught in the crosswind of a courtyard. After all, what was the human body after death? Just so much garbage. Dust to dust.

  “Well, we’ve solved nothing,” Don said, somewhat regaining his composure.

  “We seemed to have agreed,” Christine said, reading over her notes, “that at all costs, we must prevent an autopsy.”

  “Everything, the whole credibility of our approach, depends upon the elimination of all hard facts. We volunteer no information other than what is beyond question. A girl drowned. It was an accident.”

  “And why did we come to Rehoboth?”

  “A working weekend—the only logical explanation.”

  I was quite serious about this point. At last a reasonable exit was becoming visible. I was sure, Don, too, had begun to see a slight ray of hope for his position.

  “It does have some logic. Let me see if I’m able to understand it. We report a drowning, whether the body is found or not, preferably before it is found. We offer as little explanation as possible—an accident—a working weekend. We pick our way across the public record as if i
t were a mine field. Our goal, the ultimate option, is to keep everything shrouded in mystery—everything vague, no facts, nothing definite with which to achieve a firm conclusion. We keep all comment from reporters in person.”

  “And we control, as much as possible, the outflow of information.”

  “We issue bland short statements, filled with sentimental asides, like ‘regrets,’ ‘shock,’ ‘tragedy.’ ” Don had the reflexes of the consummate politician and the feel for public persuasion with its style and idiom. “All right,” he said. “We’ve explored some options. Now, let’s list priorities.”

  He was becoming extraordinarily businesslike about the whole episode. I couldn’t tell whether he was on the verge of hysterics or simply cool and confident. It was that thought that had begun to gnaw at me. Was all this really happening? Was he putting me on? Was this really a test of my mettle? Had he staged all this just to test his power over us? His voice seemed sharper, his lips tighter, as if he were spitting out the words, forcing them out one after the other.

  “Priority one,” he said. “I’ve got to appear at the local police station and report the drowning. I’ve got to make a statement. I should probably appear with you, Lou. I play out my role, cool but contrite. Let’s face it, she is a member of my staff. I do not answer any questions. Perhaps I can cleverly intimidate the local gendarme who is suddenly confronted with the celebrated Donald Benjamin James. Can you just see the look on his face? He’s just bursting to tell the wife and the local representative of the Rehoboth Bugle. I tell him I’ll be here when he needs me. I assure him of my availability. I betray no guilt, no remorse. Only pity. Only sadness. He sits by his broken down manual typewriter and types out my statement. I sign it, once again assure him of my availability, and take off back to the house to steel myself against total destruction of my whole world. I stand here like Sampson among the Philistines, pushing the whole hall down on my head. Would you call that priority one, Lou? That’s priority one, right Christine? I got it down pretty pat, don’t you think?”

  I had never questioned his ability to grasp his situation, only the need for him to recover his senses and act. But would he act? Was this only a kind of verbal hysteria that had seized him and was quickly exhausting him?

  “Priority two. I’ll bet you don’t know what priority two is, Lou.”

  “You seem to have most of the answers.”

  He stood up. His face was in a deep flush. He looked feverish.

  “Priority two will be Karen. We’ve got to convince her to keep her public cool. I really feel sorry for her. What a humiliation. The beautiful Karen James, with her fantastic charm, all her youthful good looks, couldn’t keep her boy on the string. Karen must be carefully fit into the charade. You know something, Lou, I hope she refuses. I hope she blows the whole lid off the whole thing. I hope she speaks the unspeakable. ‘This crummy bastard was two-timing me and I don’t care what happens to him!’ But she won’t. Not Karen. She’s too damned smart. She’ll hold me up for ransom.”

  “She’s had to be a dummy not to have suspected that you were cheating on her all these years.”

  “That’s the most insufferable part of her character. She wouldn’t even raise the point. She never raised the point.”

  “Maybe it’s because she didn’t want to know the truth,” Christine said.

  “The truth—don’t talk to me about the truth,” Don said. “I don’t even want to hear the word. There is something repulsive about the word.”

  He walked across the room, poured himself another tumbler of Jack Daniels, and drank it in a gulp.

  “How am I doing on my priorities, Lou? Are my priorities okay? I’ve snowed the authorities. I’ve snowed Karen. Now comes the hard part. Priority three. I’ve got somehow to get to old Mr. What’s-his-name. What was her last name? Jackson. Yeah, Jackson. I’ve got to go through with that confrontation. I’ve got to tell him about the death of his beautiful dream. How he must have sweated for that kid to get an education. How he must have worked to make something of his pride and joy. And I, the hotshot politician from the West, busted up his dream. I’ve got to lay my heart out in front of this black man and ask his forgiveness and his silence. I must say to him, ‘Black man, don’t trouble the waters; let sleeping dogs lie. Don’t rock the boat.’ Words he has swallowed before—words that stick in his craw every day of his life.”

  He started for the Jack Daniels again. This time I got there first.

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Don. You’re going to need all your wits. The worst thing that can happen is your appearing drunk.”

  “I appear as I appear,” he said menacingly. I thought he was going to wrestle me for the bottle. Instead, he threw the glass against the wall with all his strength. It splattered over the tile floor. Then, spent, he sat down again.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said after a long silence. “Well, we beter get on with it.”

  There was no question about the course of action that lay ahead. We had only to decide upon the details of execution and hope that somehow Don would be able to sustain himself through the ordeal. Obviously, Karen was our first problem. She had to be called. She had to come out here. Don’s two sons were both away at school. And Barnstable, as staff director, had to be filled in. And Don’s mother. Who else? My God—the world, the whole damned world.

  IX

  Of one thing, though, I had become certain. Donald James was not bugging out. He probably didn’t realize it yet, but he had made the decision to stand and fight. Without voicing our thoughts, we had calculated the odds. What did we have to lose? In the gloom of the early morning hours, tired, our energies spent, panic and confusion lapping at our guts, we seemed to have reached the bottom rung of despair. There was nowhere to go but up.

  Don stepped into one of the bedrooms to make the call to Karen, not the room he had shared with Marlena, but the one in which Christine and I had spent the night. We could hear the low drone of his voice through the closed door. It was strange, this sense of urgent privacy that he felt the need for now, as if in the act of shutting out “strangers” he was somehow making it up to Karen.

  Karen’s reaction to Don’s dilemma was moderately predictable. Would she go along? How could she do otherwise? Marriages to politicians are cemented by ambition. After years of conditioning, of licking envelopes, of shaking endless lines of hands, and of the fixed, frozen smile of the banquet circuit, surely she was conditioned to understand her role. But then, Karen could be difficult. And humiliation is an eccentric emotion.

  After fifteen minutes, he opened the door of the bedroom and returned to us. He looked stronger, more confident.

  “She’s on her way. I told her to call Jack. They’ll drive out together. I’m sure Jack will call here as soon as she gets to him. Poor Jack.”

  Jack Barnstable was staff director on the one assignment that had absorbed his life from the very beginning of Don’s career, the presidential campaign of Senator Donald Benjamin James. He was a pro, a man of gargantuan size, appetite and mind. Jack Barnstable was indispensable to our future strategy.

  “What was her reaction?” I asked.

  “Well, I was pretty vague. I gave her just enough details for her to get the message.”

  “Evasion again?”

  The telephone ring blasted its way into our consciousness, frightening us with its sudden intensity. Christine picked it up and handed it to Don.

  “Yes, Jack.” He listened patiently. “That’s about the size of it, Jack.” We could hear a muffled voice at the other end and could visually observe the impact of the words on Don. He looked at his wach.

  “Well, I guess I owe you that much, Jack. Briefly, this is the story. . . .”

  He outlined the bare details. He did not hide the fact of his having an affair with Marlena. One did not hold these things back from Jack Barnstable.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” Don said, after he had given him the story. “Yes, we do have some ideas. We, we’ve considered tha
t. No, don’t bring any lawyers, not yet.”

  He hung up and looked at his watch again.

  “We should go now. We should report to the police,” Don said. He stretched out his arms in front of him. His hands shook. “I need time,” he said. “I’ll blow my cool. I need time.”

  “Let’s wait for Jack,” I suggested.

  “Three more hours.” He thought for a moment. “I have got to have more time.”

  “Maybe you should try and get some sleep,” I said.

  “Who the hell can sleep?”

  “You’re going to need all your wits, Don.”

  But instead of answering, he walked out into the night again. I followed. The beach seemed a wasteland of deadness. The waters had calmed. Heavy clouds obscured the moonlight. It seemed as if the world had simply stopped. He looked in either direction, his eyes making an effort to penetrate the inky darkness. Then he shrugged and came in again.

  X

  I watched Christine typing on the blue portable that was always an essential part of her baggage. Businesslike and alert, her glasses slipping halfway down her nose, she was typing a memo to Jack Barnstable. It was a reflex of her way of life. Perhaps a painter would paint in her situation. A writer would write. A carpenter would chisel wood.

  Don had gone into the bedroom, Christine’s and mine, and was, hopefully, asleep. I looked in and didn’t see a stir. I couldn’t sleep. My mind was busy with details on how we were going to cope with the next twenty-four hours. The crucial twenty-four hours—the onslaught of the news media, the pressures of political allies and enemies, the reaction from friends and foes from abroad. Barnstable would have the toughest assignment. He would have to keep the whole organization in line, not only the sixty-odd staff people on the campaign payroll, but the bankrollers, who would be quick to panic, and the amateurs, who, in the absence of any payment, would be the toughest to hold, especially the women. It was not simply the case of an indiscretion by, perhaps, the head of a corporation. Hell, he could be replaced. But how could you replace the man who was the organization? That was the whole point of the game. He was not a man. He was an entity, an organization. He presided over a closed world of bright young men and women with burning eyes who wrote long memos and filled pages of printed loose-leaf books: the “DBJ Advance Man’s Manual”; the “DBJ Index of Past Policy Guide”; the “DBJ Audio-Visual Policy Line”; including the authorized pictures, the authorized poses, the authorized words, the authorized method of endorsement; the “DBJ Foreign Policy Index”; the “DBJ Past Poll Index”; the “DBJ Supplementary Staff Guide” (the campaign staff as opposed to the senatorial staff); the “Green Book of Contributors”—three copies, Jack’s, mine and Max’s.